The healthcare system is racing to deploy breakthrough AI models faster than ever before. This powerful technology is being used to solve critical problems in medicine, and organizations such as Epic, Microsoft and its healthcare subsidiary Nuance are at the forefront. Despite the many advantageous benefits, AI poses new ethical and legal questions.
Epic, a behemoth health-records company, is prioritizing the use of generative AI—the underlying technology powering ChatGPT, a human response-generating app. Seth Hain, Epic’s head of research and development, commented on how quickly companies are making the next generation of AI products, and the excitement it is generating from customers. Microsoft and Nuance, acquired by Microsoft, have been a popular choice in healthcare, due to the deep partnership they have with OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT.
The range of AI applications in healthcare is growing rapidly, with uses such as automating medical notes, speeding up medical research, assessing patient populations for early signs of disease and machine-learning models providing access to free therapy. Microsoft is researching the potential for GPT to provide guidance for doctors on patients’ treatment plans, although there are still deep scientific, ethical and legal questions that need to be answered.
Meanwhile, healthcare providers are working on their own AI experiments, trying to strike a balance between speed and safety. Peter Lee, Microsoft’s head of research, commented during a Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society conference that there are “very significant, awe-inspiring benefits but also some scary risks” to generative AI.
Companies such as Mayo Clinic, Kaiser Permanente and Providence are currently focused on working with generative AI to make more mundane elements of healthcare efficient, such as help desk and paperwork tasks. Nuance is making a product that records conversations between patients/doctors and then generates an automated medical note that goes directly into the patient’s health record.
The AI opportunities are wide-ranging, however, ethical and legal limitations must be addressed in order to ensure the safety of the patient. Companies are excited by the potential of using AI in healthcare, but plenty of questions remain unanswered.
